


Propriety

by InsominiacArrest



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Dancing, F/F, First Kiss, Tension, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 15:59:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9190586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsominiacArrest/pseuds/InsominiacArrest
Summary: Yellow Pearl can’t stop watching Blue Pearl.Incompetent and morose- Yellow Pearl knew to keep eye on her and perhaps improve the blue pearl. After the diamond’s ask them to leave, Yellow Pearl tries to get her to dance properly. Maybe she can stop watching after that.minor spoilers/hints for ‘That Will Be All’





	

She doesn’t know how else to quell this. How else to make it right again, because for one thing, it was all very wrong.

Yellow Pearl’s eyes narrowed as they fell on Blue Pearl. They always had to be on Blue Pearl- that’s how it was.

She had her legs swept underneath herself and face tilted downwards, mouth expressionless- like a line flattened by a Bismuth. She was pristine, looking to the side as if in shame, these blue gems always with their melancholy and shame.

Yellow Pearl clenches her fists and approaches her slowly. “What do you think you’re doing?” She snaps at the other pearl to get her attention. It was true, they had the same rank, but surely this was for the greater good, surely her diamond knew the _real_ rank of things anyway.

Blue Pearl stayed motionless, as if she didn’t hear her or didn’t care. Yellow Pearl’s nostrils flared and she sailed towards her with precise steps, trying to display the true elegance of a pearl. Not just this glum mockery of the title.

Blue Pearl remained on the floor like cut marble and Yellow Pearl knelt down, examining her momentarily before she took her chin in her hand roughly, tilting it up so that they were face to face. “What.” She growled, a tone to mirror her Diamond’s, “Do you think that was.”  
  
Blue Pearl’s mouth hung open, it was a crescent moon, an open window and Yellow Pearl feels something close to horror, something she couldn’t place.

“Excuse…me?” Blue Pearl finally speaks and it sends an electric fury through her spine.

“You were off-key, out of step, completely boneless and not to mention sloppy.” She bunched up her fists up, “Are you a pearl or aren’t you? That was disgraceful!”

Blue Pearl remained placid, unphased and very still, it sent that same bubbling red in her center. Yellow Pearl clenches her teeth and tries to speak, “The dance was ruined.”  
  
Blue Pearl tilted her head down again and Yellow Pearl wanted to show her what real service meant. And maybe take her gem and crack it. Yellow Pearl blinks several times to banish the thought. Pearl’s weren’t violent. Pearl’s were…Yellow Pearl narrowed her eyes again, this was her fault.

Yellow Pearl speaks again to shake her, “Why else do you think they would send us away?” She crosses her arms over her chest, “They would never send us away if we had done it right.”  
  
Blue Pearl looked at her lap, “They said they wanted privacy.” She finally looks up and her voice is completely even, like a deep well. “It’s not our place to question them.”  
  
Yellow Pearl’s face falls as she realizes she’s right. She sweeps the feeling away.

“Get up.” She barks and reaches for Blue Pearl’s hand, “Get up, get up, you’ve obviously been trained by trash. We’ll fix this before they come for us again.”  
  
Blue Pearl scrunches her nose slightly, ever so much, but allows herself to be pulled to her feet. Just like her diamond, Yellow Pearl sniffs.

“It’s a backstep and then a twirl, your knees were barely locked. Follow my lead.” Yellow Pearl clasps her hand to Blue Pearl’s waist, feeling a thrumming from her own gem.

Blue Pearl spins and holds her leg up, Yellow Pearl bends it towards her body, “Further. With confidence.” She would make a servant of her yet.

Blue Pearl allows herself to trapsed and led across the floor, the extra room outside where her Diamond and Blue Diamond were still talking.

“We’ll work on your high-pitched squeal of a song later.” She scoffs and holds her closer to her chest- surely make her footwork more precise.

Blue Pearl’s voice carries to her ear like a breeze and Yellow Pearl’s suppresses a shudder. This is what she was talking about- Blue Pearl was doing it all wrong.

“I was cut for this just as much as you were.” She spoke evenly, a level of coolness in her tone Yellow Pearl didn’t recognize.

Yellow Pearl opens her mouth in a coiling disgust, “I am trying to _help_. You should be grateful.”

Her hands tightened around Blue Pearl and she wanted to dip her. Dangle her. Stop looking at the other pearl that she had been looking at for decades now.

Blue Pearl takes a step closer to her and Yellow Pearl’s voice catches in her throat, Blue Pearl was still a whisper but a sharp one, “If you lay a hand on me, be sure, my diamond will never let you reform again. We’re only pearls.”  
  
Yellow Pearl gave a low muffled sound in the back of her throat, “I would never! Pearls never inflict violence. It’s unheard of. Vile.” Her mouth hung open and something itched under her gloss, “You should….know that.” She wished she said that part with more force.

“Faster.” Blue Pearl said with her usual hush, and then they are spinning in tight circles, trying to outpace the other as Yellow Pearl’s hands tried to mold into Blue Pearl’s physical form. She had to stop, but she kept going.

“This is…” Yellow Pearl’s brow furrowed and Blue Pearl’s mouth opened, and then closed again, Yellow Pearl felt like lifting her sinking chin again, “What is it?”

“I saw one once.” Blue Pearl’s voice carried as far as Yellow Pearl’s ear and no further.

“What? A pearl who could actually dance? You’ll find they are quite common outside of-” Blue Pearl swept her to the right and put her foot delicately behind Yellow Pearl’s heel. Yellow Pearl pitches backward as Blue Pearl trips her, only catching her the last minute before she hit the floor. She had dipped her.

Yellow Pearl tried to speak but the same licking red feeling kept her in place. It was oscillating like a radio wave and suddenly she knew this was a bad idea. This was a bad idea. What would her diamond say.

“A pearl. Who was fighting.” Her voice was a shimmer above the water and suddenly Yellow Pearl’s cheeks flared, talk like this felt forbidden. She bristled.

“What are you even talking about? That’s impossible.” She scoffed and Blue Pearl dipped her lower. Bringing her face to her ear as she whispered.

“She fought like a Quartz. With a sword.” Yellow Pearl wish she would drop her now. 

Blue Pearl loosened her inelegant grip and Yellow Pearl rose to her feet hesitantly. Blue Pearl spoke again, “It was…horrifying. But it has been done.” Yellow Pearl dusted herself off, but her eyes lingered on Blue Pearl’s hands.

“What does that have to do with….that’s not,” She tried to form the words but she was looking at Blue Pearl’s flushed cheeks. Maybe she was worried Yellow Pearl would tell.

She should tell.

“Don’t be absurd.” She said offhandedly and turned away, “I’m sure you saw something else.” She couldn’t meet her face.

“Perhaps.” Blue Pearl returned with a sigh, “And…It wouldn’t matter anyway.”  
  
Yellow Pearl nods and takes Pearl by the waist and hand again. They twirl on light feet around the glass room, storage, out of the way so their diamonds could talk.

Yellow Pearl sniffed and broke the silence. “There you go. Better.” She says as they two-step to the opposite side of the room.

“I’m not doing anything different.” She says softly and Yellow Pearl frowns.

“Of course you are. I wouldn’t have noticed that it was such a disaster before otherwise.” She dismisses her shortly.

Blue Pearl sighs again, “Maybe you should be paying attention to our diamonds. Not me.”  
  
There it was. Her being right again. Yellow Pearl screws up her face, “We have to hold each other accountable! It’s the only way pearls will ever represent ourselves properly.”  
  
“Properly?”  
  
“Properly.”  
  
Blue Pearl shook her shaggy head, “Blue Diamond says, it’s best to be unseen.” Her mouth hung open like a crescent moon again, Yellow Pearl’s watches it like a star explosion. “Ow!” Blue Pearl yelped. Yellow Pearl stepped on her feet.

Yellow Pearl’s eyebrows shot up, “Watch where your…Watch it!”

Blue Pearl frowned, “That was your fault.” She says factually and Yellow Pearl inhaled through her nose for effect.

“Well,” Her cheeks flared, “You were distracting.”

Blue Pearl suddenly smiled, like a light crackling and sudden gravity boosters going off. And then a single laugh, a little derisive but Yellow Pearl’s mind short circuits.

“What was that?” She snapped and Blue Pearl shrugged and something in Yellow Pearl twitched, she smiles back. “Well, I suppose I won’t tell Blue Diamond that you can smile.”  
  
Blue Pearl gave a put-upon sigh, “I won’t tell Yellow Diamond you can give something that’s almost compliment.”  
  
Something intangible rose in her. Pearl’s were never allowed to keep secrets. Blue Pearl was spinning her round and round and it wasn’t so much a dance anymore as dizzying loops with their hands clasped together.

She laughed out loud, like an exclamation point and a blow horn. Blue Pearl held on tight and Yellow Pearl stepped forward and nothing could have stopped her at that moment, but it should have.

Her mouth meets Blue Pearl’s, she wanted the spinning to amount to something. She kisses her with something sharp and firm as she presses them together. And Blue Pearl tilts her head for her.

She tilts her head. Yellow Pearl is dim and cracked and taken apart shard by shard at that simple moment.

“Pearl!”

They break apart instantly and molten ice goes through Yellow Pearl’s gem cleavages, the voice calls.

Blue Pearl sweeps her curtain of bangs back and her eyes are wide, “You are insufferable.” It was the most emphatic tone Yellow Pearl had ever heard from her. Yellow’s mouth hangs open, “And…” Her voice is a single note across the cold tiles, “I understand.”

How could she? How could she?

But they were walking, they were being called, they were pearls. And _supernova’s_ , Yellow Pearl feels the same thrumming in her gem and her head feels sick. She pushes all thought down and keeps walking.

This wasn’t. It couldn’t be, _it couldn’t be anything._ She chides herself as she corrects her loose footwork, and held her head high as she entered. It wasn’t anything.

They rejoin their diamond’s and Yellow Diamond gives Blue Diamond another firm pat on the back. “Lead Blue. There is no avoiding it.” Blue Diamond doesn’t meet her eye and Yellow Diamond shakes her head, “It’s what we were cut for.”  
  
Blue Diamond looks back to the door and nods ever so slightly, she is the first to leave the room with Blue Pearl trailing after her, as melancholy as ever. Yellow Pearl watches her leave.

And it’s the same watching it has always been.


End file.
